Book review: 'The 9/11 Wars'

Book: The 9/11 Wars
Jason Burke
Allen Lane, 2011
710 pages
Rs599

On September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden’s jihadis blew up the Twin Towers in New York, killing 3,000 people. In the decade of 9/11 wars that followed, a million soldiers, policemen and civilians were killed or wounded, mostly in Muslim countries.
In the years before 9/11, America had invested billions of dollars in Afghan jihadis and in Pakistan to conduct a proxy war against the Soviet Union. After 9/11, America has spent hundreds of billions more to control Pakistan and eliminate the jihadis. Before 9/11, Washington chuckled; after 9/11 Moscow, had a hearty laugh. International games are deadly funny.

In the West there was recruitment of young people as soldiers to fight Islamic terror. In the Muslim world, there was recruitment of young people to fight Western terror. Bin Laden wanted even his sons to be jihadis, but they refused. One son, Omar, wrote in his memoirs, “My father hated his enemies more than he loved his sons.”
Many books have been written on the 9/11 wars, and many more will be written as more inside information is uncovered. Terrorism has opened a new area in history writing. In the centuries ahead, various Gibbons will be writing about “the decline and fall” of this or that. It is too early to say who won and who lost. The contented believe the war against terror has been won; others are trying to anticipate what could come next. The battles of World War II lasted five years, but the war continued until communist Soviet Union and China were converted to capitalism. But now ‘new socialism’ is rising everywhere, even in America, because of the global economic mess. What could that lead to? Wars don’t end; they evolve into new forms, new rhetoric, and new weapons.

Jason Burke’s book, 700 pages of detailed information, provokes thoughts about the past that led to Islamic terrorism and about its possible future. The fundamental question provoked by the book is: Why did it all happen? One answer is provided by Burke’s quote from a speech delivered by Afghanistan’s Mullah Omar “to the supporters of freedom from the people of Europe and the West in general”. Omar says: “Your colonist rulers have attacked our country in the name of war against terrorism, and that is to serve a small number of capitalists and suckers of people’s blood, in order to gain more wealth. They have built their new colonialist traps and daily they kill our youths, elderly, women and children. And at night they barge into our houses and destroy our green gardens and general property, educational and trade centers, with blind air raids. Pushing away this aggression and defending our country is our legitimate and national right, and we will use our rights to defend with all methods and sacrifices… [against your] financial power and your satanic trickery.”

Karl Marx had warned of this when he said that the oppressed proletariat turns to religion for solace. So, “religion is the opium of the masses.” But religion can be used for ‘jihad’ (search for inner peace), or it can be manipulated to produce jihadi terrorists who are inspired to seek revenge. The miserable political and economic conditions in Muslim countries attracted people to the rhetoric of the Omars and the Bin Ladens.  

There’s nothing novel or startling about Omar’s speech quoted above. Such speeches against ‘enemies’ have been made throughout history by crusading popes, Jew-haters, Calvinists, Puritans, defenders of kingdoms or empires, and even anti-Darwinians. But the maximum noise was made by rabble-rousers in the 20th century — Hitler, Goebbels, Mussolini, Stalin, McCarthy, Ayatollah Khomeini, dictators in many countries, and politicians in feudal democracies like India. Behind the seemingly logical rhetoric is the unstated threat: Either be with us …Or else!

It is the fear of ‘or else’ that compels the majority of people to submission and to look away from the terror around them. This rhetoric doesn’t arise out of nothing. Behind it is a history of suppressed anger. Terrorism and revolutions are the effects of causes. The history of Muslim anger can be summed up thus: “Where we were once! And where are we now!” There is a harking back to Islam’s glorious past when it produced grand architecture, art, literature, music, science, medicine, philosophy, mysticism, and global commerce. There was a secular sharing among Muslim sects and with immigrant Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu communities. There was an exchange of scholars. The safety of the regions encouraged adventurous explorers like Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta and Alberuni who produced grand travelogues.      

But every rise eventually leads to decline and fall. The Islamic empire broke up into fiefdoms ruled by oppressive lords. Religion became a political party sponsored by rulers. The Muslim world became a collection of ghettoes. It is necessary to understand the frustration, anger, and the current political revolts in the Muslim world. Before the 9/11 wars, the rest of world was aware only of Muslim dictators and puppets. Now, because of the huge amount of on-the-ground reportage like Burke’s, the world knows more about the misery of Muslim societies. Realpolitik cynics, who never think of the unintended consequences of their clever politics, will continue to play their games.

But it is time for global civil society to invest in creating a more civilised future. If the effort fails, then the 9/11 wars will continue and launch other similar wars. There is growing worldwide anger against corruption, corporate greed, joblessness, cheap immigrant labour, loss of privacy because of governments’ spying technologies, and the fear of an upcoming Orwellian ‘1984’ world. There’s lots of trouble and angry rhetoric ahead. Burke’s book provokes extrapolation into areas beyond the 9/11 wars.